MARK COLVIN: Once people thought they existed only in sailor's tall tales. Jules Verne's fictional Captain Nemo fought one, and over the years stories about giant squid have terrified children and land lovers alike.

Now, scientists on Tasmania's west coast have their own tale to tell about a gargantuan creature, which has washed up on a beach near Strahan.

The hood of this giant squid is nearly two metres long, the tentacles are even longer.

Sabra Lane reports.

SABRA LANE: It certainly isn't the usual flotsam or jetsam.

Imagine the shock one local got at nine o'clock last night, when he took a leisurely stroll on remote Ocean Beach near Strahan, on Tasmania's west coast.

Dr Genefor Walker-Smith is the senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the Tasmania Museum in Hobart. She drove to Strahan today to see the creature for herself, and arrived at the remote beach mid-afternoon.

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: We've actually had to come off the beach. We were racing against a high tide, so we had to load the squid into a trailer and drive it off the beach, but basically the squid is broken into two pieces, so the head and the tentacles are one great big piece, and the mantle or the body, is the other piece.

SABRA LANE: And how big is the mantle? How big is the creature all up?

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: This creature is missing its two long feeding tentacles, and the shorter tentacles have had the ends eaten off by something. So at the moment the whole thing we've got is about three and half metres, and the mantle is 1.70 metres.

SABRA LANE: Can you put it into some sort of perspective for me, like, size-wise, what does is compare with?

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: It is probably as long as a station wagon, I suppose, as long as a car.

SABRA LANE: It's the fourth giant squid to have washed up or been caught in Tasmanian waters, and while it's a monster, it is by no means the largest specimen on record.

In fact, this catch is weeny in comparison.

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: The largest ever recorded was 18 metres, and based on what we've got, I'm estimating that this squid was probably only about 7 metres long.

SABRA LANE: Now, you've researched these for a long time, what's it like actually seeing something that big on a beach?

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: It's pretty amazing. It's a rare occurrence, so it's quite a privilege to come up here and collect this one, and to be able to take it back to the museum for further research.

SABRA LANE: And what will you do with it?

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: Well, we've just finished taking some measurements, and we've taken some small tissue samples for DNA analysis. We don't know very much about the squid because it's so rare for them to wash up on the beaches, and the live quite deep.

They live between 500 and 1,500 metres.

SABRA LANE: Have you got any theories as to why it might have washed up there on the west coast?

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: We don't know really why it died, it doesn't look like its been attacked by anything. It could have just been a matter of dying from old age, and then it's floated to the surface and it would have just been brought into the beach just on the currents and the tides.

SABRA LANE: Dr Walker-Smith says giant squids live in waters off Tasmania's west coast, but other than that, they don't know much about them.

And she says it was a bit of a challenge to lift the creature onto a truck.

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: Well, what we had was a special tarpaulin with some ropes down the side, and we had to roll the specimen onto the tarpaulin, and that took four of five of us to actually lift it down into the back of the trailer.

SABRA LANE: And of course, the question most probably want to know: would it be good, deep-fried?

GENEFOR WALKER-SMITH: They'd be probably looking at it thinking, my goodness, that could make enormous calamari rings, but no, you couldn't. The muscle tissue in the giant squid is full of ammonia, which it uses to help it float, uses it for buoyancy, and so the ammonia would make it taste quite awful.

MARK COLVIN: Well, I suppose you could use it to wash your windows. Dr Genefor Walker-Smith ending that report by Sabra Lane.